The good thing about the way we learn is that we, after having a tremendous revelation of some sorts, can radically change our position on a certain topic. I remember when I was still very young, ignorant and stupid, I had very icky ideas about the composition of the universe, man and his mind.
I was around fifteen when I discovered Satanism and Witchcraft. I submerged myself in it, for as well as it went without being detected by god fearing parents, or my father who had no tolerance for anything “weird” at all. (To the effect that I have become a very mainstream person….) In hindsight, I was probably drawn by the open sexuality of it. And that is not a weird thing at all for a young adolescent discovering exactly that: sex.
I came in touch, later on, with more paraphernalia belonging to the realm of the vague. Stone Therapy, Chi Gong, Tai Chi – although that had the practical application of supporting my other martial arts training – and stuff like hand reflex zones, UFOs and astrology. Until, at some point which I can trace back to my early twenties, suddenly a thought struck me: one has to BELIEVE in all that shit.
And that’s when the turning over started. In the days that followed, I spent some time assessing my ideas and opinions with the objective to discover how well they were actually rooted in any scientific thinking. I had become politically active by then, with an interest group that was very closely associating itself with highly rational thinking. Its interest was controllability and reproducibility, for the sake of equality (of people).
To make a long story short, I discarded all the crap that was populating my head and that was untraceable in the scientific world, and shoved that to “the stuff I will not make any statements on if I don’t know what it really is…”- container. In science the rule is: “He Who Claims, Is He Who Proves.” So my life became blissfully easy. I didn’t have to care any more about anything that wasn’t there. Should I fear god? Show him/her/it to me, and I might. If he has a proper authority inducing grey beard, of course, which…
…brings me exactly where I want to be: the man with the beard whom I respect so much for having put some difficult stuff for me into perspective: the human consciousness. His name: Daniel C. Dennett.
I used to think, in accordance with the theorem of Gödel, that it would never be possible to synthesise human consciousness. Gödel stated that any system needs parameters from outside that system – or a meta-system – to be proven, and that some things have to be assumed. So, if we were to synthesise a human mind, we would first have to fully understand it. And this, according to my application of Gödel, would not be possible, because we would not have a meta system to understand anything outside our understanding apparatus with. In other words: if we don’t have a super consciousness, we cannot understand, thus build, a consciousness.
I was very, very naive and confused in my attempt to protect the human-level consciousness from our godless meddling, and I was totally on the wrong track too. Dennett has swept the Gödel objection – invoked by myself – under the carpet, as a fully irrelevant one. It does not even appear in his books, as far as I know, but I might be wrong on that one.
Firstly, we already make real human beings, with fully fledged conciousness, by ourselves without knowing Fuck-All about ourselves. Secondly, and here comes Dennett, our brain takes care of itself. It becomes such a complex and information focused organ with such elaborate wiring, that it generates this complex behaviour spontaneously. We are bio-electrical machines which step over the complexity-consciousness threshold. I just made the term up, and it might be somewhat wobbly, but I think one can follow. We “evolved” brains that can simply do the maths in the amounts and magnitudes needed to handle the task of human consciousness.
Dennett has written a lot, and not everything is evenly interesting. One reason for that is maybe, that he repeats his position all over the place, over-shouting himself a little, but perhaps that only happens when one reads 4 or more books of his. I would recommend the book “Conciousness Explained” and leave it to that. It will demystify your insights into the human mind thoroughly. And demystifying is good.
But, if you can relate to pictures better, Dennett has a high I-net presence in the form of flicks and picks, so treat yourself.
